The Mech Touch

The product reveal had come to an end, but Ves was not ready to depart from Bortele III.

As a major military and industrial hub, the Bortele System attracted a lot of people, goods, groups, companies and more.

Lots of salvage from many different battlefields constantly trickled in from time to time. Even the latest incident related to Ves could not stop the local economy from booming.

Ves could get a lot of stuff done on this planet. It would be a waste for him to depart too early.

Alexa Streon had already begun the process of headhunting another batch of second-class Journeyman Mech Designers.

Now that Ves received several reminders why it was important for him to remain active in the second-class mech industry, he did not want to neglect this business at all. The profit levels might not be as great compared to running a successful first-class mech business, but the quantity of units sold was much greater!

Volume was quite important to many mech designers. One of the reasons why first-class mech designers occasionally designed second-class mechs that were ordinarily beneath them was because it was a lot easier to sell millions of copies.

The first-class mech market was a lot smaller. Not only that, but the level of competition was a lot higher, making it so that the bigger players left much less room for independent businesses to thrive.

Ves knew that he could not rely on the various reputation boosts to forcibly carve out a place in the first-class mech market. The customers over there were much more demanding and discerning. No amount of hype could compensate for inferior performance.

Seeing that it was way more challenging for a mech designer to get started in the first-class mech market, Ves needed to ensure that his LMC remained active and healthy in the second-class mech market.

This was rather challenging when many of the lead designers of the Design Department had gone off to undergo EdNet training.

"Several years must have passed from their perspective." Ves mused as his hands idly played with Emma's metal container. "By the time they come out a few years later, they have already mentally aged by 20 years."

The changes would be massive. Relatively young and vigorous Journeymen such as Sara Voiken and Cormaunt Hempkamp would lose a lot of the restlessness and spontaneity that characterized their age.

In return, they would come out with all of the knowledge in advanced science and engineering that they managed to cram in their heads for 20 straight years.

This was definitely a great tradeoff to most second-class mech designers. It was a surefire way for them to quickly gain the qualifications to design first-class mech designs. It would have been unlikely for them to gain this precious opportunity through other means.

Yet... Ves still did not forward to the prospect of using an EdNet quota himself.

The main reason why he rejected it was because he did not want to isolate himself from reality during an important moment in history.

However, Ves had to admit that he also feared the loss of the traits that would only stay with him for so long.

The older he became, the harder it became for him to just set aside his rationality and give in to his emotional desires.

Many people usually saw this as a character flaw, but Ves did not share the same opinion.

He designed many of his best works during moments of intense passion!

While Ves did not think he would ever lose the ability to get inspired, he suspected that it might not happen as frequently in the future.

The longer he lived, the more he became burdened by knowledge and concerns.

How long would it take for him to transition into an old fogey who spent most of his time thinking about problems relating to the survival and prosperity of red humanity?

"Ignorance is bliss." He sighed.

Ves looked down at the metal cat statue that the Destroyer of Worlds had gifted to him. The object radiated a clear sense of warmth and threat.

The large spiritual fragment donated by Emma was so powerful that if he could blow it up somehow, the resulting spiritual blast would be powerful enough to kill his weaker design spirits!

It was literally a weapon of mass destruction packaged in a small metal ornament!

He couldn't allow this fragment to fall into the wrong hands.

"At least I don't have to worry about using it up too quickly." He smirked.

Perhaps Irene had become annoyed at the fact that Ves used up the initial spiritual fragment of Emma too quickly.

If Ves no longer had a fragment at his side, then there was no way for the Destroyer of Worlds to pull him out of danger!

The large spiritual fragment that contained a fraction of the essence of a True God neatly addressed this shortcoming.

Compared to the more ordinary spiritual fragments that Ves handled in the past, he noticed that his latest one had many more useful traits that he appreciated. He also managed to figure out several powerful new uses for this remarkably valuable gift.

"You're actually replenishing your energy level over time." He observed.

Blinky could clearly observe the small energy vortex surrounding the container. It sucked in the destruction-attributed energy from the environment and gradually strengthened the fragment further.

If this process took place long enough, then the large spiritual fragment might one day reach the stage where Emma could be reborn after death!

Of course, the resurrection of a True God-level entity was anything but simple. The energy requirements were so large that the fragment would have to keep absorbing energy for millions of years.

"The absorption rate is too low." Ves frowned.

That meant that if he used up the energy contained in the fragment for various purposes, he would have to wait a long time for it to replenish its reserves.

The main reason why its efficiency was so low was because there was not that much destruction energy floating around in the background.

Perhaps that might change once the Destroyer of Worlds started to act like a demonic cultivator and left a trail of shattered planets in her wake, but for now the local galactic environment was in a state of relative prosperity.

In any case, as long as Ves made sparing use of the spiritual fragment, he did not have to worry about causing it to disappear. He just had to wait a few months or years to recharge and return to its former state.

"How can I improve the replenishment rate?"

A stronger attraction force and a higher concentration of destruction energy should do the job.

The best way to make that happen was if he placed the fragment in an environment that was surrounded by high-grade hyper materials of the right attribute.

Ves developed a greater interest in the metal material that Irene had casually brought into existence by utilizing her powers as a True God.

He did not recognize the material at all, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. He whipped out his handheld multiscanner and proceeded to examine its properties.

Once he collected a lot of measurements, he accessed the Red Association's internal database and used the parameters to find if there were any matches.

[Novastella. High-grade metallic hyper material. Attributes: destruction, disaster, stars, energy, death. Origin: remnant planetary matter ejected out of a star system by a supernova. Very rare as most Novastella in existence is flung through interstellar space. Only small amounts of Novastella are captured by adjacent star systems and deposited into asteroid belts and natural satellites.]

"Interesting."

The origin of Novastella was absolutely remarkable. Supernovae were not too uncommon on a galactic scale, but it was difficult to harvest all of the matter that got flung in every direction, especially if they were small and scarce in number.

Yet it was exactly because of the remarkable history and formation of Novastella that made it so valuable and powerful!

The Destroyer of Worlds selected this material to create a container for Emma's spiritual fragment for good reason. It matched her domain and inclinations far too well!

Ves even came up with the idea of turning this cat statue into the basis of an extraordinarily powerful warhead!

If he ever found himself in a desperate situation and needed to rely on overwhelming powerful to defeat an implacable foe, then he could always convert the Novastella cat statue and the remarkably powerful spiritual fragment into a small superweapon that should be exceptionally dangerous against all manner of extraordinary foes!

"This is an enormous waste, though."

Irene may be able to utilize her god kingdom to freely convert energy into Novastella whenever needed, but others had to harvest this rare material the old-fashioned way.

It was impossible for people like Ves to obtain a large and consistent supply of Novastella due to its troublesome formation conditions.

"Ugh, how troublesome."

His clan should be on the lookout for rich deposits of Novastella. Even though it was rare and not that prevalent, perhaps there might be planets where a large chunk of Novastella had fallen in the past.

Ves set the matter of the hyper material aside and summarized the remaining possible uses of this powerful fragment.

He could call upon an energy manifestation of Emma just like before. The power she was able to channel this time was much greater for obvious reasons. He just needed to pay attention to the much greater consumption of the precious spiritual fragment.

Even without calling Emma over, he was still able to borrow a tiny fraction of her powerful domain by stimulating it with spiritual energy.

"Blinky, go do your stuff."

"Mrow."

His companion spirit came out and fed the fragment with a modest amount of destruction energy stored in the Blinkyverse.

The fragment grew more excited and started to produce a stronger energy field in a small radius around its location.

Ves curiously examined the properties of this strengthened energy field and found that it worked much like a prickly disruption field.

Though Ves felt as if he was getting stung by needles from every direction, he was resilient enough to shrug off this irritating effect.

What he cared about was the fact that this mildly destructive field scrambled every electronic signal and messed up the flow of E energy radiation!

This not only made it great for jamming purposes, but could also disrupt all kinds of spiritual sorcery, especially ones that targeted him in particular!

The effect of Emma's domain was not as strong and absolute as Irene's god kingdom, but it was already strong enough to satisfy his demands.

"Stop. Reverse."

Blinky no longer spat out destruction energy, but instead started to devour it from the environment.

The spiritual fragment slowly started to get drained as Blinky specifically tried to draw from its reserves.

This was a modest way for Blinky to increase the concentration of destruction energy in his Blinkyverse.

While the quantity of destruction energy was limited, the quality was exceedingly high!

"Stop."

Ves did not dare to absorb too much of Emma's energy. Her imprint on them was so strong that she might actually be able to invade the Blinkyverse as long as enough of her spiritual energy managed to slip inside!

"It's best to be careful."

There were several other ways he could make use of the spiritual fragment. For one, he could use it to directly communicate with Irene if he wanted.

This was much more secure and convenient than speaking with her over the galactic net.

He resisted the temptation to test it out. He had just talked to Irene yesterday. He would just be annoying her if he contacted her for no good reason.

Ves at least needed to wait until he managed to produce a large batch of Emma totems that could serve as excellent conversion tools for Irene's future cult.

"I will have to do an excellent job with that if I want to impress her. It will be difficult for her cult to get off the ground otherwise."

After all, what the Destroyer of Worlds needed to do was nothing less than force the alien masses to worship a hostile human god!